


How to Follow, how to Fall

by Symmet



Category: Supernatural
Genre: BROTP Cas/Gabriel, Castiel - mentioned - Freeform, Heaven, a little sad, the old days
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-19
Updated: 2014-10-19
Packaged: 2018-02-21 18:12:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2477690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Symmet/pseuds/Symmet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gabriel is leaving, and Joshua weeds.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How to Follow, how to Fall

**Author's Note:**

> This was self-inspired by a lil 'started as a doodle and ended up here' picture of kid Castiel. I think I just wanted to draw a back and wings. Anyways, this sprung from that. I was just suddenly overcome with Brotp feels. I don't normally really think Castiel and Gabriel as having been close - there were so many brothers and sisters between them, and Gabriel was an archangel - but I can't deny that the idea is adorable as hell (or the opposite, in this case). Anyways, sorry to blather on. I hope you enjoy. The picture will be at the end.

“Joshua.”

He stands, still trying to be what he had let go of not so long ago. Gabriel looks almost exactly as he used to - an emulation no creature should have to learn to perfect. But Heaven has changed since Lucifer left, and Gabriel has changed with it. How he struggled to seem as what he used to so effortlessly be. Deep down, he feels that a part of him fell with his brother, and now it constantly calls him down to earth, away from the saturated dystopia of Heaven.

“Leaving already, Gabriel?”

The Attendant knows emotion as well as Gabriel, although he is the only one to let it out at the moment. He gets up, dusting the dirt from his clothes, belying the unfathomable being beneath, smiling placidly at the archangel who sought him out in the dense growth of the Garden.

“I’ve stayed way longer than I planned.” Gabriel says by way of greeting. Already his emotionless facade is breaking. Joshua was the only brother he’d ever told about the extent of his visits to the human realm. It seemed that Joshua had an air about him that lent itself to soothing other’s troubles. Gabriel, it had turned out, is no different.

“Without saying goodbye to your favorite brother?” He says gently.

“I’m here now, aren’t I?” Finally it falls away, eyebrows quirked playfully as his wings flare in an imitation of indigence. He’s hoping the conversation will continue to go in the direction he wants.

“Not I, Gabriel.” This will not happen. The Gardener wipes his hoe with a rag, never looking away from Gabriel, never faltering in his smile.

Even so, Gabriel falls still, his wings - all six, magnificent, a burnished gold, still vibrating with the song of the Host - droop, almost comically, although no other angel is near, and truth be told, Joshua doubts they would have understood the humor in the first place.  
Gabriel eventually accepts that what he had hoped to be a quick, relatively painless goodbye will not be so simple, “… Castiel will be fine. He is a good soldier. He’ll forget me and my pranks.” He shrugs, wings curling in from some unspoken pain.

“Angels were not built to forget, Gabriel,” Joshua reminds his brother kindly, although this is lost on the brother because the words themselves sting in Gabriel's grace.

“Then I suppose he’s special like that.” Gabriel returns, his voice turning spiteful at the things Joshua implies, the guilt Joshua plies to his aching wings, so tired of the war the plague themselves with, and the ideals they arrogantly define in God's absence.

“So you will say nothing to him? Let him think you dead?” Joshua continues to push.

“He can’t have my troubles on his wings. It’s better that I go now, like this.” Gabriel laments, as if he is trying to convince Joshua as much as himself.

“You mean you wouldn’t be able to leave if he asked you to stay.” Joshua says softly. He has always been very good at taking apart statements and leaving the bare elements for inspection - regardless of whether it was wanted or not. God, too, has on many occasions - though Joshua would never say how many - found this slightly frustrating quirk readily available.

“Something like that.” Gabriel says tightly.

“This will change him, Gabriel.” Joshua warns the ruffled archangel.

“ _Angels aren’t built to change_ , Josh.” Gabriel mimics back childishly.

“So he is special.” Joshua returns calmly, always calm. His wings, warm, earthen browns, seeming green at the edges, are respectfully folded, unlike his riled sibling's, and he holds the shovel behind his back. He is prepared to wait, but these truthes are bubbling under Gabriel's grace, escaping like fire from a volcano, beautiful and dangerous.

“I _can’t_ \- look at him out there, with his straight little back. Trying to keep his wings in line. Telling him I’m going is only going to make him doubt. It’s only gonna get him hurt.” Gabriel had turned to look at the training going on in the distance, eyes finding a little fledgling that peered back nervously and smiled that not-quite-smile when he caught sight of the archangel. Even as Gabriel raised his wings, a beacon that placed favoritism on the brother that he was supposed to love equally to all, in greeting, Gabriel's face became that of a hunted man. He knew what independence would cost so loyal a seraph as Castiel. If it would not trouble his younger brother with thoughts of doubt, it would surely take the form of ‘re-education’ a new, horrifying program Michael and Raphael had developed to deal with those beginning to question so as to prevent Lucifer’s ranks from growing and keep their own secure.

Gabriel could not stay in so toxic a system. He could not join Lucifer, who once he had loved most. He couldn’t take Cas - sweet, innocent, faithful Castiel - from Heaven. He could not quite bring himself to disillusion so divine that belief fostered in Castiel’s grace. His faith was too pure for Gabriel to selfishly sully. But already he had started to affect the little seraph. Castiel, who preferred no one’s company to Gabriel’s. Castiel, who only ever wanted to train with Gabriel. Castiel, who left heaven to watch the earthly realm with Gabriel sometimes. Castiel, who loved God's creation as was preached but never truly practiced. Castiel, who loved humans so fairly that even Gabriel felt ashamed in his presence, because none of them, _none of them_ , truly felt as God had bade they feel for humans. None except for Castiel, who did it freely. The difference between them and Lucifer was likely that they could bow in God's name, whereas Lucifer _refused_ in God's name. They were cowards. It was like being told you have to bow before a _dog_ , to love _that_ more than God. They repeated the words, bent on their knees, but in truth, they felt little to nothing for God's most favored children.

Only God's first favored child had anything to say about it, and the truth of the matter was it was less an act of rebellion than a tantrum. Not that it mattered, in the end. In the end, Lucifer had taken Gabriel under his wing as he had done to Cas. And now Lucifer was dragging Gabriel down with him. He couldn't do that to Castiel. Joshua, of course, has something to say about this.

  
“He stands so straight because he knows you are watching. He looks back because your gaze is all the strength he needs.” Joshua steps up to stand by Gabriel and watch the tiny seraph under instruction, “How can you not see that?”

When Gabriel fails to answer, he continues, “Castiel was meant to be a _scholar_ , Gabriel. Because of you, he has chosen to become a warrior.”

  
Gabriel’s gaze fell off of the fledgling in the distance, head bowing under the pressure of a halo he was neither sure he deserved nor that he even wanted - not with what being an angel had come to mean. He didn’t turn to look at Joshua, not avoiding the truth so blatantly before him because he had already accepted it, but disliked it nonetheless. When he speaks, finally, he sounds tired, resigned, but more than that, sure, with the confidence of an archangel, as if with sudden clarity he remembered how he'd realized he needed to leave in the first place. He speaks from experience, an old wound bleeding fresh, one his own brother had dug into him, remembering bittersweet the memories of Lucifer. Knowing that any other choice would continue to cause pain just as terrible as he had felt when Lucifer fell. A kind of pain he would never want to inflict on Castiel.

  
“All that will cause him is pain, Joshua. I’ve done enough to him by that alone. It's time for me to go.”

  
And then suddenly the archangel Gabriel was gone. Not just from the Garden, but from Heaven, from the Host. A few human hours later and the call would rise up after the battle he had joined finished, calling out the names of those lost to Lucifer’s lies, calling out the names of those lost to Lucifer’s army, _Brother Gabriel has Ascended to Father’s Side, Brother Gabriel died for the Heavenly Host, Brother Gabriel is gone._

  
Or so it went.

  
Joshua continued to weed, saying softly, “You know not what you begin, Gabriel.” But there were only the sweet budding flowers to hear, and the many years that would pass to show an angel who had crushed all emotion in favor of faith, who had admired the beauty of his Father’s creation from afar, instead of relishing what his elder brother had once so dotingly spoken of. That angel would remember half fondly, half sadly, the memories of humans before he devoted himself entirely to his faith, drawing away from the fresh, chaotic air of humanity that he had so enjoyed in Gabriel's company. And then, once he had touched that world again, let his grace brush against it too long, he learned what Gabriel knew secretly, that humans _were_ deserving of the love given to them, could earn it, and when they did, they were suns to the stars that angels were, but by then it would be too late - and Castiel would fall, and so follow his brother's wing beats, carving into the clouds as he did.


End file.
